Counting the 100 trends, fashions, memes, personalities and ideas that shaped the first decade of the 21st Century.

Monday, September 28, 2009

#95-Fauxhawks

It was the decade when...

men found a faux for a friend.

In another instance of a once edgy and shocking fashion trend being appropriated and pussy-fied for the masses, the Aughts brought us the devolution of that once glorious bouffant donned by punk rockers and bellicose Native Canadians everywhere: the mohawk. Or, as it's mainstream, watered down after-birth came to be known: the fauxhawk. Once the most extreme of all hairstyles, standing as high and narrow as a Chinese fan and occasionally manipulated into sharp crown like points that resembled an inquisitional torture device, with the mowhawk, standing out was the raison d'etre. Nothing about Travis Bickle was pret-a-porter. Mowhawks pushed the envelope so far that mass-appeal reamained, not a distant dream, but a terrible fear, to be resisted at every turn. Until now.

Blame David Beckham, England's best smelling athlete; he sported the worlds most famous fauxhawk in 2005, the style's peak of popularity. Thanks to Mr. Posh Spice and other celebrities from across the pond, fauxhawks, like mowhawks before them, carried a vaguely Anglo-fied air - a plus for trends ever since the days when Carnaby street was synonymous with fashion.

The New York Times probably put the final nail in the punk counter-culture's proverbial coffin when it wrote a 2005 article blaming the fauxhawk for turning the mowhawk "cute." Of course, having adorable Maddox Jolie, super-baby celebrity and adopted progeny of Angelina Jolie, sporting the look didn't help.

And what does the faux-hawk actually look like? Well, no longer a threatening, warrior-like strip of a hair surrounded by bald, exposed, naked flesh, (Celtic warriors believed the strip of hair represented an extension of the spinal cord. HARD CORE!) the fauxhawk's tonsorial elan is more akin to what it would look like if a barber was trying to cover up the fact that his client's head came to a point.

Though its popularity has waned somewhat, this unfortunate coiffure has not yet gone the way of the George Clooney Caesar Cut. The fauxhawk may be here to stay. We are all pinheads now.